It's not like the Books
by Dr.Linkenshloff
Summary: Just when you think you're free, something happens and you realize that you'll always be in Fate's chains. Post movie, Chas is alive.
1. Death

**Title:** It's not like the Books.

**Rating:** PG-13 for death.

**Pairing:** John/Chas…sorta

**Summery:** The moments leading up to and including Chas dying from his point of view.

**Note:** I'm actually planning on making this into a chapter story of undetermined length. This is really just meant to be the prologue for it, though it could be considered a stand alone. It's also 1000 words of not beta'd goodness as my editor is going through finals week or something to that effect that gives him an excuse not to read through it.

It's also not very good as I wrote it in a couple of hours and I'm very bad at basically rewriting a scene into someone's perspective that I've already seen in a movie. I can't use my imagination as much to describe things, so it gets a little shoddy.

* * *

**Prologue**

Everything can be planned out, everything can be perfectly timed and measured, but the second you get to the battle field, everything goes wrong.

Whoever _the hell said that was right,_ he mused to himself. _Fuck him._

At first, everything had gone according to plan, including the fear that had his stomach in knots. The cross had worked, causing Holy Water to rain down on the demons and give John a chance to deport their asses. He was inordinately proud that the cross had been his idea. _Maybe,_ Chas had thought, _maybe this'll finally prove to John that I'm ready._

Then when he shot the demon lunging at John his mind yelled _Fuck _yeah_ asshole!_ but managed to remain looking calm and cool with the situation. He hoped.

When they had walked into the room with the bath/pool thing, he knew there was something wrong. No powerful physic in sight and a dead guy floating in the water. Never a good thing. Then John was chest deep in water that started to mysteriously bubble, not a good thing either.

They had come _expecting_ to do an exorcism, so it wasn't even that much of a surprise when Angela shot up out of the water in a very possessed manner. He couldn't see her face, but had guessed that she was by the time that John was on the bottom of the pool being drowned. Again with the saving John thing, it was almost starting to be a habit.

That woman was damn hard to move, it was almost like when she got possessed she'd become a lot denser and gained a couple hundred pounds that didn't show anywhere. By the time Chas finally wrenched her off of John's neck and back onto the tiles, he was completely soaked and John was half drowned. _Payback time bitch,_ went through his mind as he held down the demon possessing Angela…who was wearing John's shirt? What the fuck?

John chanted out some Latin, expelled Mammon and things seemed to be alright.

That's when everything went to hell.

The demon was trying to fucking _eat_ his way out of her, and John lost it. It seemed like everything that he'd ever learned just flew out of his mind and he started chanting the first bits of scrambled Latin that came to mind.

_Uh John?_ Chas's mind thought at the exorcist after thinking through the random bits of Latin he was hearing. _This isn't a steam demon you know…_

John couldn't seem to get a hold on the words he was trying to say, and the things he _was_ saying were doing jack shit. Chas knew the words, he had looked over them just that afternoon, they were all there ready to use. He began softly at first, and then getting stronger as John glanced up at him in surprise then joined in with him. It felt good, to finally be doing something, even it was kneeling on a cold floor, completely soaked and hoping to hell that the world wasn't going to end. He was with John though, and it felt so good despite all of that, to be chanting together, like he had finally been accepted as an actual apprentice.

When John had said, "You did good, kid" the best emotion he ever felt was just making his fingers itch and his mouth say "Kramer. Chas Kramer assho - " before _something_ yanked him backwards away from John before slamming him repeatedly between the floor and ceiling.

It hurt, everything hurt. He lay there knowing he was dying, he could feel it. There was just something inside of him that said: _You're fucked._

He thought about the tunnel of light other people had talked about when coming back from death. He didn't see any light, all he saw was John's face looking down at him with an anguished expression.

Most people thought that John was completely emotionless, and never showed a thing. It wasn't true though, you just had to look much deeper. The slight wrinkle at the edge of his eye, the minuscule twist of his mouth, but his eyes, his eyes said everything. And right now they were saying _I'm sorry._

"It's not like it is in the books, is it?"

"No kid, it's not."

He could feel the blood welling up in his lungs, knew that soon he'd start to drown in his own blood. There was a trickle of it at the edge of his mouth but he was so tired, too tired to wipe it away.

It really wasn't like the books; they made everything seem so simple. Well, at least that's how it started out as, and then fate threw him a curveball.

If he had never met John, or if he'd walked away as soon as he could, he wouldn't have been lying there on the cold hard floor of a hospital, choking to death on his own blood. He didn't regret it though, not a minute.

Chas was struggling with the darkness, trying to stave it off until the last moment so he could make sure John would be okay. The asshole didn't deserve to go to Hell. From a very far distance, he could hear John trying to call something into the light, he sounded really pissed off. Chas guessed that having your apprentice die would do that to you.

Everything was slipping away, John's voice, the light, the rushing of some sort, the flash of wings and white? _Gabriel_ his mind thought dizzily as he struggled with unconsciousness.

It was too hard to stay there, he couldn't hold on any longer. His last thought before making the dive into death was, _Fucking angels._


	2. Life

**Title: **It's not like the Books

**Rating: **14-A for swearing.

**Author:** Ratatusk

**Authors Note: **I really don't have much of an idea of where to go with this. I have an emotional plot line, but I need an action based one, otherwise this story is going to be pretty boring. So, this is where you come in. If you can think of a good action based plot, let me know (I am the world's worst person for coming up with plots) and I may in fact use it. Something along the lines of: "Holy fuck, the world's going to end. Now John and Chas must go be brave and stop it."

Anyways, sorry for the incredibly short update, I find it hard to write when I don't have a clue where the story is going, and the quality decreases rapidly. So, if anyone has any ideas, let me know. Even if it's mentioning an amulet of great power, some random place in South America, a tribe trying to raise demons…I can work with those.

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He had said, "Undo what Gabriel did", and not the first thing that had flashed into his mind. The words to let Isabel go to Heaven were there, at the tip of his tongue when he realized. Gabriel. Gabriel must have been responsible for Isabel's death. So John gambled, and he won.

"Undo what Gabriel did."

He hadn't been certain that Gabriel was the one that lured Isabel to her death, but the pieces had slipped together in his mind, making a loud clanging noise as they did so, bringing it to his attention. It fit. Against all odd and the thousands of half breeds in the world, it fit.

It would have been a test, just the lightest touch on the mind of mere mortal. Obviously not worthy to serve if she broke under the ephemeral hand touching on her thoughts. It was just a whisper of Isabel's name, calling her to the rooftop and beyond, but it was enough. It had still been a suicide; she jumped on her own vocation.

"Undo what Gabriel did."

With those words, it would make Isabel's death be as if the angel had pushed her instead of simply tantalizing the woman over the edge with his voice.

He snorted at the otherworld like logic. The way he phrased it, he'd half expected Isabel to show up in the place she'd died, which would have probably been a bit traumatic for her since the reason for her death would have been there as well – minus the wings. Instead she was in Heaven, and presumably happy.

And Chas, Chas had been killed by Gabriel as well.

Two birds with one stone.

So now the kid was sleeping in his bed again, his still healing body covered with bruises – they were going to hurt like a bitch when he woke up – exhausted from coming back from the dead, but that was bound to happen with anyone. But alive, and that's what mattered.

John was too tired to do anything but sit in a chair with his arms resting on his knees and watch the kid he'd somehow allowed to open a crack in his armor and wiggle his way into his heart. The very bottom of his heart. In a dark corner that hadn't had any light on it until the moment Chas had been ripped out of his life and then carefully put back in it. Strange how dying can change your perspective.

God he wanted a smoke.

Instead he fell asleep.

* * *

There's a time between waking and sleep that is filled with jumbled images, sounds and smells that could all be in a dream, or they could be real. Chas hovered there, his mind in shambles as he tried to pick out the pieces of memory to explain what had happened.

_I'm dead_ was the only certain thing in this hollow valley of his lost mind. _So am I in Heaven or Hell?_

It felt like a place he knew, the smell of cigarette smoke and the very faint stench of alcohol. He had almost placed it when his mind spiraled off to something new. John, Gabriel, Angela. What had happened? Chas had died, he knew that, but what the hell happened to John?

John, John, John. Something was there, at the corner of his mind. _I'm in John's apartment._ Nothing made any sense, his over taxed mind struggled with everything. _This stinking shit hole is Heaven?_

His eyes snapped open. They instantly closed again against the brightest morning sunlight he'd ever seen. Tentatively, his eyelids opened just the slightest crack, away from the sun. John was sitting in a chair, apparently asleep, alive but covered in blood and water and looking like Hell had just spat him out. His normally spotless suit was stiffened by a couple gallons of evaporated water, his shirt was missing nearly all its buttons, leaving his chest exposed for Chas's viewing pleasure. Quite a nice view.

As Chas stared at the man sleeping in the chair beside him, the sun changed. It was now being filtered through the blinds and onto John's face, giving him the appearance that he was trapped behind bars. A prison of his own making.

"John," his voice was a hoarse croaking, barely audible in the silence of the flat. Chas shifted slightly when John gave no sign of waking, and sucked in a breath of pain. His whole body felt like God had used him as His soccer ball.

"John," he tried again. Louder this time, though no less hoarse.

John's hand immediately went for whatever weapon he had hidden away in his jacket even before his eyes opened. Apparently whatever he was looking was wasn't there as his hand was scrambling over his clothes searching for whatever it was. Finally, his eyes focused on Chas.

"Oh," he said as his hand fell back to his side in tired defeat. "Hey kid."

"You look like shit."

A small smile quirked its way onto John's lips. "So do you."

"What the_ fuck_ happened, John?"

John let out a barking laugh that was full of meaning, but only to himself. "Hell of a long story kid."

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Thank you to all my reviewers, and that includes the ones to my other one shot stories as well. I love you guys, you make writing seem worth while. 


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